IBM ( IBM) announced today that its Research scientists are working with the Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute, in Bologna, Italy, to use information technology to better address treatment and research for rare genetic skeletal diseases.
Scientists from the two organizations are collaborating on a system called BioMIMS -- short for BioMedical Imaging Management Solution -- which integrates different types of medical data such as images, phenotype data, and genomic data. The system will enable advanced analytics on family trees that are dynamically created by the system to correlate between patients who show similar signs of the disease.
As scientists gain insight into genetic diseases at the molecular level, the critical role played by family history is becoming more apparent at all levels of treatment. However, until now, there has been no complete system for easily collecting, classifying and analyzing family histories for patients suffering from hereditary skeletal diseases like single and multiple exostoses. Unfortunately, most of this information traditionally sits in different hospitals and databases, and in different formats.
The new technology being developed by IBM and the Rizzoli Institute, will enable doctors to call upon all information related to a hereditary disease -- including genetic information, observations studied, and imaging data from the perspective of the treatment history for any family members -- so diagnosis and treatment becomes faster, less expensive, and more personalized. The project is scheduled to be completed in mid to late 2010.